


Amour-Propre

by ELL10TTE



Category: Assassination Classroom
Genre: Abuse, Child Abuse, Childhood Trauma, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Trauma, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-10
Updated: 2018-04-09
Packaged: 2018-12-25 23:20:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12046401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ELL10TTE/pseuds/ELL10TTE
Summary: Gakushuu is young. Too young to really understand the difference between himself and his peers. Too young to really know what a principal even is, too young to know why the word dictates his behavior, why it dictates people’s perceptions of him, their expectations of him. But he does know what a father is. And he certainly knows what it means when one is disappointed in him.





	1. Asano

**Author's Note:**

> basically, gakushuu's dad is abusive and awful. i had originally wanted to give a bit of a 3-a perspective on the series, but then i started projecting and got carried away so i guess this is a beast of it's own creation now.
> 
> if it wasn't clear, the story starts out in gakushuu's primary school years and tracks his life through to his highschool graduation. i made the main assclass arc be set in highschool just to make it easier to write. there's not much romancing now and basically none of e-class is in it as of chapter 1, but they will make their appearances later. i've planned 2 chapters total but it may extend to 3 depending.
> 
> please take the tags and warnings seriously, gakuho is both physically and mentally abusive in this setting. as a victim of similar abuse myself (again, projecting) it was difficult to write at times, so please take care of yourselves.
> 
> i hope you enjoy, and don't hesitate to lmk of any errors. i've never had a beta in my life.

“ _Excuse me_ , I know your father.”

A hand reaches out and snatches him by the back of his shirt, lifting and hauling him clear off of the table. She’s not being malicious, he knows this. He feels the force of the pull, feels the front of his collar dig aggressively into his throat, But it’s her words that catch him. This old art teacher, the one whose classroom is being renovated, it’s her craggy, cigarette smoke dulled words that catch him: _I Know Your Father._

Gakushuu stops whatever charade he is playing with his friends and goes limp in her grasp, forfeiting the use of his legs until she deposits him on the floor like a sack of books.

“I know your father,” she starts again (his head snaps up at the word), “and he would not be pleased with your behavior.” She goes on and on, lecturing him on why he shouldn’t be sitting on tables, why he shouldn’t be laughing as loud as he is, why he shouldn’t be running and fooling around with the rest of the children. Why his father would be disappointed in him. “You are the son of the principal. I expect better from you, and he does too.”

He listens, but at this point he still doesn’t understand. Why him specifically? Why not the other children? Without even a glance to the side, he can tell her words are directed at his behavior and his alone. But why? Why him, why _just him?_ Why not everyone else, just as rambunctious and poorly behaved as he?

The cigarette smoke teacher marches off. Gakushuu doesn’t watch her, instead opting to stare at the floor. His companions are silent for a moment before breaking out into a frenzied argument.

“That was too much!”

“She’s so mean!”

“What was that about!”

“We weren’t even doing anything!”

Gakushuu is young. Too young to really understand the difference between himself and his peers. Too young to really know what a principal even is, too young to know why the word dictates his behavior, why it dictates people’s perceptions of him, their _expectations_ of him. But he does know what a father is. And he certainly knows what it means when one is disappointed in him.

“Do you think she’ll tell?” he asks, cutting softly through the excited chatter of being lectured for the first time at school. An excitement, he doesn’t seem to share. He doesn’t look up from the floor, examining his shoes. Small and white, with little bunny clips holding the elastics together. He likes them a lot.

“Tell who? Your Dad?” A nameless, faceless companion asks.

“Yeah,” he murmurs, unsure of himself.

“Well if she does, just tell him we weren’t doing anything!”

“Yeah!”

“It’s recess anyways so we can do whatever we want!”

A chorus of agreements right out around him and Gakushuu looks up, smiling. He laughs along with them. He doesn’t understand. “Yeah, yeah you’re right!”

* * *

Asano Gakuho grabs a fist-full of his son's hair and shakes him back and forth. Screaming fills the room, the source unknown and undecipherable. It seemed to come from everywhere, bouncing off the walls and reverberating through his head almost like he was hallucinating it.

“Can you go one day without disappointing me?! Can you do _anything_ without disappointing me? Disappointing our _name?_ Can you?! _Asano!”_

His father releases him, practically throwing him to the hardwood floor. Tears and snot drip down Gakushuu’s face unabashedly and he’s crying, not words or phrases or arguments but just incoherent, panicked screaming. He is powerless in this moment, powerless to stop his dad and even more powerless to stop his tears. Hands come up to cover his eyes, tear at his face, pounding at his head and temple, stop, stop, stop, _stop, stop, stop!_

“ _Enough_ with the  _whining!_ ” His father booms, raising a hand experimentally and then forcing it down. He is breathing hard, too hard, fist clenched tight enough at his side that his knuckles are turning white. Staring.

Gakushuu is balled up on the floor, trembling minutely and refusing to budge until his choking sobs subside in the otherwise silent room. As long as he can be as small as possible, as long as he doesn't _look_ at his father, then everything's going to be okay.

He tentatively glances up at his father when, after several minutes, no further reprimand is given. His father stares down at him, eyes cold and unyielding. Gakushuu holds eye contact, not out of defiance but of fear. He sits paralyzed after meeting the gaze of his father, not processing the disgust in his eyes and barely registering the way his skin crawls from the force in his father’s eyes. He’s too young. He doesn’t understand.

Gakushuu waits for the sign. The sign that it would be okay to run into his father’s arms and cry. There had to be a sign. He waited in anticipation for his father to pat him on the head, say "it’s okay," tell him "I know you didn’t mean to do it." Like in the movies, or those TV shows he watched when his parents weren’t home. Where the father and the son fight and yell and scream and make up and love each other. He waits.

His father stretches out a hand towards him and Gakushuu can’t hide how his heart soars when he sees that outstretched palm. Here it is! Here it is, here’s the sign! A grin splits his face from ear to ear, and he swears his eyes are practically sparkling. Here it comes. Here it comes, here it comes. Here it comes!

The hand slaps him across the face.

* * *

His father is yelling again. The house is filled to burst with the familiar low bellowing echo of Principal Asano’s lecture. His words border on violent at the force that they spill out, a violent, howling chastising that commands the ear and leaves no room for drifting off.

And following it, right on schedule, the high pitched squeal of Asano Gakushuu. It’s the same rinse and repeat argument: Gakushuu is underperforming, Gakushuu isn't living up to his name, _Gakushuu_ isn’t trying hard enough, _Gakushuu isn’t good enough_. Over and over, again and again.

“I will _not_ allow anyone under _my_ roof and under _my_ name to be such a disgrace!” The elder Asano crumples the offending test paper into a ball and flings it at the ground. Gakushuu, distracted briefly by the movement, instinctily goes to reach for it.

A hand seizes a fistful of his hair, dragging him upwards.

“Are you even _listening_ to me, Gakushuu?! Why can’t you understand anything?!” A foot comes down, crushing the ball even further. The grip on his bangs starts to shake him back and forth like he was trying to tear his hair out of his skull. “Why are you so preoccupied with this paper? This is nothing more than the proof of your failure!”

Release, and Gakushuu stumbles back. He knocks into the chair behind him. His primary school uniform flutters to the without notice. It hurt, the collision hurt, his head hurt, his _hair_ hurt.

It doesn’t make sense, he thinks. Hair doesn’t have nerve endings, why does it hurt so much when someone he pulls it? That doesn’t make sense at all. Gakushuu’s eyes are trained on the floor. He wills tears not to fall, lest they disappoint his father further.

“This,” the Principal kicks the wad of paper into his line of view, “is nothing more than the proof of your failure. I do not want this recycling-bin scrap in this house.” A pause. “What are you crying for?”

Gakushuu freezes. His father's dark, dark eyes bore twin holes into the crown of his head, and Gakushuu does not dare to look up and meet his gaze. Not this time.

The Principal stomps a foot on a ground, almost like a toddler throwing a tantrum. Except no one flinches and whimpers at the sight of a toddler stomping their feet. “If you were the child I had hoped you would become,” his father starts, but Gakushuu isn’t listening. Instead, he thinks about the nerve endings he has in his hair, that only _he_ has in his hair because no one else does, because it doesn’t hurt _other people_ when someone touches their hair. “You would be crying because you underperformed and you want to do better. You would be crying because you want to improve and you’re disappointed in yourself.” Gakushuu’s father stares down at his son, kneeling at his feet with his head bowed. The picture of subservience.

He’s disgusted. “But I know you are not that child.” 

* * *

The police are at his house. Gakushuu is confused, but he allows his mother to wordlessly lead him upstairs without complaint. He’s learned not to interject when important looking people in suits show up at his house and request his father. Not to mention he rather likes his mother; she’s kind and tall and she’s never done anything to wrong him. So he does what she requests without a word of complaint.

She spreads a blanket on the floor of his bedroom and sits down on it, urging him to do the same. Gakushuu plops down next to his mother, still having yet to speak. “You know you can _talk to me_ , Gakushuu,” she says. Her voice is quiet and silky, with just a hint of a giggle in it.

He shakes his head no, and she gives a small laugh, turning to a book that she’s brought into the room with them.

Gakushuu doesn’t know precisely how to act around his mother. She was the complete antithesis of his father; where he was angular and angry she was rounded and calm. He swears he’d never seen even a twitch of anything but serene contentedness pass over her face.

With his father it was easy to behave: make no sound, do as you are told, look and act presentably, speak with respect, yes sir, no sir, please sir. Go to soccer practice, and then judo, and then violin lessons, and then up to your room to study, brush your teeth, go to bed. Be good, that was all. In the end, it was a very simple list of instructions, very methodical and cause and effect. Gakushuu behaves, and his father is not cross with him. Things are simple.

With his mother, it is not nearly as straight-forward. Gakushuu never knew what consequence his actions might have around her. Part of that was simply that they never spent time together one-on-one, but the other was her somehow persistent perfect temperament. A person who never showed anything but a smile on their face is just as unpredictable as someone who acted completely irrationally. Or so stood Gakushuu’s opinion.

So he stays silent, just in case. Not the same tight, bowstring silent as with his father, but a contented quietness. The two are satisfied to simply sit and wait while his father works out whatever issue the two women in black suits have with him.

Looking back, Gakushuu would remember this interaction incredibly fondly. Within several days, his mother is gone.

* * *

Gakushuu loses his shoes. The ones with the bunny clips, the white ones. He liked those shoes.

“Hey what’s wrong with you today?” His friend asks. He has brown hair, brown eyes. He’s average in height, in weight, in face, he is so exceptionally average that it’s amazing. But he’s the one that reached out to him to become friends, and _he’s_ the one that stands by him, and talks to him, and laughs at his jokes. And he’s the one friend Gakushuu can really count on at this point.

Gakushuu shifts uncomfortably in his seat, thighs crushing his hands to the sticky plastic. “I lost my shoes,” he mutters.

His friend laughs, not taking him seriously. “What, that’s all?”

Gakushuu shakes his head, staring down at his knees. “My father will be mad.”

Sakakibara laughs again, and Gakushuu honest to god can’t figure out what’s so funny. He’d taken off his shoes and put them in the cubby at school like he did every day, but this time after gym he’d forgotten to put them back on. They sat there collecting dust in that darkened classroom, and Gakushuu’s stomach twists when he thinks about how easy it would’ve been to avoid leaving them therel. If he’d just turned his head, _seen them_ , did  _something_ different. They were _right there,_ and he had missed them.

Sakakibara is still laughing, a sort of carefree laziness present in his tone even now. “It’ll be fine, just tell him you forgot them and that you promise to bring them home tomorrow!” He slaps him on the back, like that’s going to make everything better.

Gakushuu shakes his head again. “No, he’ll hit me,” his hands ball up under his legs and he can feel how huge his eyes grow. It’s like he can’t tear his eyes away from his knees. “He’ll yell and he’ll pull my hair and he’ll hit me, and he’ll hit me.”

“Hey he wouldn’t do that,” Sakakibara starts, worry edging out his lackadaisical nature, and now Gakushuu can look up, _now_ he can wrench his eyes up from his tiny knees and glare. The wild, unprovoked glare of a cornered animal, eyes wide enough that they’d be comical in any other situation. Sakakibara doesn’t understand, this painfully average friend whom he wouldn’t give up for the world, he doesn’t understand. He doesn’t understand, why doesn’t he understand?

“You don’t get it...” Gakushuu tells him, voice concerningly steady. His eyes are the size of quarters, alight with the same terrifying gleam of the mad and desperate.

Sakakibara is afraid. For himself or for Gakushuu, he doesn’t know. “You don’t understand, my house is different. He’s going to yell at me and he’s going to hit me and he’s going to pull my hair and, and throw me around. He’ll call me disappointing… He can’t do that.”

And as suddenly as it begins, it stops. Gakushuu faces his knees again, his eyes normal sized. People are glancing awkwardly at the two of them, perplexed by the sudden outburst by the normally cool and collected Asano Gakushuu. They don’t understand, he thinks. Why don’t they understand?

* * *

“Did your father do that to you?”

Gakushuu freezes, a hand coming up to cup the ugly purple and yellow bruise wrapping itself over his right cheekbone. It was fierce, weighing upon his face like a tiger’s paw, or a snake, curling up and around the side of his eye and threatening to swallow his vision forever.

His father didn’t do it, he thinks, not really. Technically, it was the corner of the table that did it. He remembers the dark wooden point rushing up at his face at a terrifying speed with a shiver. He had closed his eyes as fast as he could lest it blind him, powerless in the moment to even throw up an arm to shield his face.

No, it wasn’t his father that caused the wound directly; he’d hit him hard enough to knock him into the table, sure, but it wasn’t his blow specifically that made the ugly swollen bruise bloom across Gakushuu’s skin like a ripe banana. The moment of contact was like nothing he’d ever felt before, blinding hot, white pain that exploded forward from his eye. It stole the oxygen from his lungs completely. He couldn’t breathe.

Struggling to get up from the floor was humiliating, thinking back. His limbs were shaking and uncoordinated, lacking any sort of fine motor control. It took almost a full three minutes, three _mortifying_ minutes of flailing about trying to remember how to move before he managed to peel himself off the ground. For the first time in his life, Gakushuu was literally struck dumb.

Gakushuu suddenly realizes with a jolt that he’s been silent for far too long, lost in the flashbacks and drowning in the shame that boils up in his chest. He rushes to try and say something, throat closing and opening a few times to no avail. What would he even say at this point? After such a lengthy pause? Would anything he came up with even seem credible anymore?

He pretends to feel around the bruise in mock surprise before responding with a breathy laugh. “What, you can still see it?”

Ren nods, thoroughly unconvinced. “Yeah, it’s the color of a slowly decaying plum, not sure how anyone could really miss it.”

Gakushuu fake winces at the severity of his friend’s description, commenting on how his “language is as flowery as ever” and spinning some tale about getting kicked in the face at soccer practice. In reality, Gakushuu is well aware of how visible the bruise still is, gray and yellow-black and still purple around the edges. It’s been a weekend so the swelling has gone down dramatically (with the help of ice pack after ice pack), but he could still very much feel the stares, the concerned whispers, the sideways glances and unspoken expressions of confusion pausing on the tips of his classmates’ tongues.

He sighs audibly, drawing a glance from his friend. He really wished he hadn’t been clumsy enough to have hit the table. Gakushuu's father and him had a sort of non-spoken “no-blows-above-the-collar” agreement. Or at least, no blows hard enough to leave a mark. It would be an embarrassment to the both of them if the great Asano Gakushuu started coming to school noticeably battered and bruised every day. Eyebrows would raise, suspicions would be voiced, and the last time the police were called to investigate his house, well...

“Are you okay?” Gakushuu’s face is ghost-white and he’s staring unblinking at the ground. Ren remembers that face, remembers what it means, and it scares him. He rushes to his friend’s side and grabs his shoulder, not missing the way Gakushuu immediately tenses up at the contact.

His vision swam. The memory of his father and the-- the belt-- the rise and fall of his father’s arm-- pain, racing across exposed skin-- What was it? Open hand? Closed fist? Belt-- cane-- no no belt, belt and-- what side, belt side? Buckle side? It must've been buckle side, belt side didn't hurt terribly, no, _nothing ever hurt that much--_

He was going to throw up.

“I’m gonna…” He trails off, not sure where the sentence was meant to go. Ren stares at his face in concern, Gakushuu’s eyes are staring off and his breathing was practically nonexistent.

It’s been years sure, but the brunet can still easily recall that day in primary school. When his friend, _his best friend,_ just as small and eerily fragile as he is now, broke down on the bus-ride home. His words echo in Ren’s ears: _“and he’ll hit me, and he’ll hit me, and he’ll hit me.”_

He feels like such a fool for not realizing it then.

“Do you need to sit down?” He offers quietly, trying not to aggravate Gakushuu further. He knows the ginger hated showing weakness, but would he even be worried about that right now? The thought of how useless he was in the face of Gakushuu’s panic set his teeth on edge.

“Yeah.. sitting," Gakushuu manages to whisper through clenched teeth. "Yeah, sounds good.”

* * *

“I can assure you that the E-Class will be no match for me,” Gakushuu’s voice rings out in the relative silence of the dimly lit office.

Asano Gakuho traces the rim of a mug of coffee he’d been nursing for two hours now. “I trust that bunch of misfits would hold nothing against _you,_ my perfect, perfect son.” The man looks up and Gakushuu cannot help the way his father’s eyes send a jolt of panic down his spine. He manages to keep his face neutral, finally learning after all those years, but he can do nothing suppress the way his posture stiffens almost unnoticeably on instinct. Like he was preparing to take a blow that wasn’t even coming.

He is fifteen now, in his first year of high-school. If he thought the stakes were high in his younger years well… even naivete had its bounds.

Gakuho’s eyes cut sharper at the movement and his son swallows. Can’t get anything past that monster, can he?

“But,” the principal says, lifting a perfect finger to point at his _perfect_ son (because no _Asano_ possesses imperfections), “I do worry about that little group of _friends_ you have there.”

Gakushuu forces himself to fake-laugh. Pretending to stifle a pretend-snort, what kind of roundabout game of politics was he playing with his own _father?_ “I would hardly call them f _riends--”_ he starts, trying to throw the other off.

“Do not try to fool me, Asano,” and Gakushuu winces at the name he uses, “But the nature of your relationships with your classmates matters little to me. I trust you to keep that group you command in line. What are you children calling yourselves again?”

It takes a moment for Gakushuu to realize he’s been asked a question. He hurries to bridge the gap; he mustn’t miss a beat, after all. “Well, the students have started to call us the ‘Five-Virtuosos--”

And his father throws back his head, and he laughs-- a bellowing, almost _angry_ laugh that chills Gakushuu to the very core. “ _Virtuosos?_ You?” He asks incredulously after composing himself. “What an amazingly undeserved level of awe these students have for you! I’m astounded at how low their standards must be." He leans back, crossing his legs with a cold expression painted across his features. Gakushuu's heart speeds up. "I'll admit you're getting there, but you are far from _that_ special.”

“Uh-- well, it is not the A-Class that came up with it necessarily--” Gakushuu cannot help but defend himself, despite his better judgement urging him against it. Tears of ridicule begin to sting in the corners of his eyes. He knows as soon as the words leave his mouth that he’s made a mistake, but somehow he still manages to be surprised when his father stands up with a clatter of the chair hitting the wall. In a flash, his father is looming before him, his eyes flashing vibrantly red as he places an impossibly large hand threateningly on his son’s shoulder. This time, Gakushuu is powerless to stop the whimper that leaves his mouth.

The towering man leans down to whisper in his son’s ear. “Stuttering in unbecoming of a young man of your caliber. Do take care not to speak out of turn, boy.”

And just as suddenly, Gakuho straightens, making his way to the exit. Meanwhile, Gakushuu remains rooted in place, staring blankly at the coffee cup his father had left abandoned on the old oak desk. Not a drop displaced, despite the commotion just moments earlier.

“Oh, and how is that Akabane character doing?” He hears the older man call behind him, his voice distant and too far-away to belong to a man occupying the same room as he.

Gakushuu hisses out a response. “His grades have not suffered despite his existing behavioral issues. He...” He rushes too quickly to fall back into alignment behind his father, panicking when no more words come to him in the moment.

“I see, I see,” his father muses at the door after a moment of disappointed silence. “Do take care of him. If he does anything terribly bad I’m afraid I’ll have no one to blame but you, after all the students of 1-A _are_ under your care.”

Gakuho waits, eying the figure of his son, shock-straight in the center of his office. He’d grown quite tall in only 15 years, quite good-looking and accomplished despite his age. A minute touch of pride alights within him simply at his son’s stately appearance. The boy takes quite a bit after his mother, but his eyes. He’d always had his father’s eyes.

“I will give you five minutes,” Gakuho calls to his son, smiling despite himself. “After that, the instructor for this block will be instructed to mark you absent. I know that you will not disappoint me.”

* * *

Gakushuu stands outside the door to his classroom. He was on trash duty that day, returning to 1-A after delivering his class’s scant waste to the dumpsters outside the school. He’d had his hand on the doorknob, ready to stroll in head-high as usual, when voices coming from within the room stopped him in his tracks.

“Asano-kun is so hot!” A voice squeals from inside the room. He pauses for a second at the door to smirk proudly to himself; if there was a single thing he was assured of it was his good looks. When his father was absent and he had some time to himself he actually rather liked to admire himself from different angles in the bathroom mirror. Egotistical, even he can admit, but fawning over his reflection, his eyes, the way his hair framed his face. It brought him what little satisfaction he could really derive in the golden birdcage he called home.

Gakushuu leans back with a self-satisfied grin, deciding to stroke his own ego and indulge in the class gossip for a few minutes. He hardly gets his worth in praise at home, he thinks, might as well listen just for a _bit._

“Isn’t he the greatest?” Another continues.

“He’s so smart, I wish I could be like him… you think he has a girlfriend?”

“ _Of course_ he does don’t be stupid-- a guy like that? Single? You’ve gotta be kidding yourself--”

“He’s the principal’s only son, _of course_ he’s going to be a dreamboat--”

“Just like his dad!” And the group bursts out laughing. Gakushuu pulls a disgusted face, mock-vomiting into the trashcan still in his hands. The thought of his teenaged classmates finding his father  _attractive_ put a damper on his pleased-as-punch mood, and he decides that must be the sign to end his little eavesdropping session.

“But you know, something about him really worries me.” Gakushuu stops cold, fingers gripping the doorknob once again.

“What’s that?” Another disembodied voice asks the first.

“Well… it’s like... He acts super weird around his dad.”

“The principal?”

“Yeah, yeah he’s like… super stiff, like he’s not… all there? You can see it in his eyes, it’s like he’s in a whole ‘nother universe!”

“I know what you mean! He’s super subdued whenever the principal’s around, isn’t he?”

“And his dad looks at him super weird. Something in his gaze gives me shivers, like he’s appraising cattle or something!” They break off to groan in unison, and Gakushuu takes it they all agreed in some way.

 _“Whaaaaaaaaat,_ you guys I don’t think it’s that deep--”

“You know, sometimes I think I see bruises on him.” Gakushuu can’t help but to press closer, face pale and fingertips white with how tightly he was gripping the metal bin. “ _Suspicious_ bruises--”

“Isn’t he just like, really clumsy though?”

“Asano-kun’s captain of about a hundred sports teams, not to mention he’s some judo- _god_ , you really buy all that shit about falling over all the time?”

Gripping the door, his only shield right now, Gakushuu is reeling. He had no idea people could just-- look _through him_ \-- he’d thought his perfect public face was finally well... perfect. He and his dad’s both. There should’ve been no way some _random classmates_ \-- not even his _friends,_ these girls!-- should’ve been able to see right past the act. The thought makes him grit his teeth.

“You know, he’s got this huge one right on the side of his chest right now. Black and mottled. It’s pretty bad.”

“A bruise?? Wha-- how would you know? It’s not like Asano-kun frequents the pool?”

“I was peeking through the window of 1-B when the boys were changing for gym.”

“Eh, Himiko, that’s nasty.”

“Pervert,” someone agrees.

“That’s not the point here!” The girl sputters, obviously flustered. “I’m telling you, it was big, and-- and _dark--_ ”

Gakushuu feels bile rising in his throat, swallowing around his own saliva. How could he have been so careless? The mark across his chest burned hot underneath his shirt. A three-hole punch, after he’d misplaced his own. He wasn’t fast enough to even block, much less _catch_ it.

“A trick of the light?”

“No there’s no way. Remember that black eye he came to school with last year?” The voice lowers to a whisper, and Gakushuu has to strain his ears to hear it. “Everyone thinks his dad did it."

"Hey, remember a _bunch_ of years ago when that _thing_ happened on the bus?"

"With Sakakibara-san right? I _think_ I remember what you're talking about..."

You know there are rumors going around? I don’t know that it’s real... buuuut people are saying that Principal Asano’s been investigated on accounts of _child-abuse_ in the past…”

“And he only _has_ one child…”

“If shit like that’s true, and _someone told_ ,  there would be such a huge--”

 _Scandal_ , Gakushuu’s brain fills in the rest for him. The bin slips from his grasp and hits the ground with a metallic clang. He hadn’t even realized how sweaty his palms had gotten.

There’s a yelp of surprise and the classroom suddenly falls deathly silent. He struggles to think of a way out, mind whirling trying to come up with excuses. Anything to make it seem like he wasn’t just listening to his classmates talking about him, about his relationship with his _father, the principal and mastermind behind the most esteemed school system in the country._ But his brain is stalling, like someone’s stuffed his head up with cotton.

He bends over to shakily grasp the edge of the can like a lifeline, holding on to it like it’s the only thing keeping him tethered to the floor right now. He swears his ears are ringing, like he’s received some awful blow, like he’s disappointed his father _again--_

Just when he starts entertaining the thought of just up and bolting, a pair of black dress-shoes step into view. “Wow, Asano, clumsy aren’t you?” A sardonic voice calls out above him, and Gakushuu's head snaps upwards in shock. _Akabane._ No, no no _no no,_ not now, _any time but now._

Gakushuu’s glued to the floor completely frozen, eyes darting around the hall trying to focus somewhere besides Akabane Karma (difficult to do even in the best of situations). He doesn’t bother to mask fear on his face; he’s broken out in a cold sweat, his skin sickly-pale, eyes absolutely wild and desperate. If his classmates saw him like this after the conversation they’d just had-- what would they do? What would they think?

What else _could_ they think? He would only confirm their suspicions, and now he couldn't even run, not after _Akabane_ outed him like that. He would have the police called on him again. No, no no, what would they do? What would his _father_ do? Everything is too real, too loud, the vibrant _red,_ red red, the red of Akabane’s hair hurts his eyes. And the room is spinning, and his ears are ringing, and he feels like he’s about to pass out, or vomit right onto Akabane’s squeaky-clean shoes, or worse, have a heart-attack and die right there on the spot.

Akabane’s eyebrows raise ever so slightly. The ever-perfect class president, cowering before him like some cornered animal. “I mean... I barely even tapped it and the trash can flew right out of your hands!” he continues. The twisted voice chuckles a little bit, and for a moment Gakushuu can’t quite comprehend what’s going on.

He keeps talking, filling the gaps while waiting for Gakushuu to catch on. He can practically see the gears turning in the other’s head, and has to suppress a giggle. “I guess it’s a good thing you’d already emptied it out, huh? Or else I might feel bad, slapping it out of your hold like that.” He shrugs, and Gakushuu finally has the strength (and mental grasp of the situation) to stand up.

“I guess you’d have had to help me clean up all the garbage then? If the guilt was _really_ consuming you and all.” He says, silently applauding himself for how normal his voice sounds.

Akabane shrugs, winking and wrinkling his nose. “Gross. Sounds like a you problem,” he jeers, flinging open the door that moments ago had been the only divider between Gakushuu and his senseless, clueless peers.

“Come on then, _Asano._ ” The redhead holds open the cheap aluminum door in mocking reverence.

“After you, Akabane.” Gakushuu gives him a small smile, easily mistaken for sarcastic. He hopes the other would get the idea. “Please, I insist.”

* * *

Gakuho examines the papers before him with disdain before tossing them onto his desk in a flourish. “Help me out, Asano. Tell me what the decision is here.”

Gakushuu stares impassively down at the extensive behavioral history laid bare before him. His eyes flicker over all the photos, hallways, eating areas, classrooms, sports fields, almost every inch of the school, taking in what each depicted. In each of them, a head of bright-red hair stands out like a pin on a map, mocking yellow eyes freezing everyone who gazed into them.

He sighs, blinking slowly. He knew the situation well. Akabane Karma, 16, Class 2-A and a top performer in almost all his years in the institution. He was practically unmatched by anyone but Gakushuu himself. Unfortunately, his personality was certainly lacking. If it wasn’t for his pristine academic record, one wouldn’t hesitate to label him as anything but another common delinquent. Usually the school was willing to overlook his outbursts. What’s a couple of underachievers minorly injured anyways? It’s not like Kunigigaoka was known for its ability to whip trouble-makers into the picture of behavioral perfection, after all. There were plenty of reality TV shows out there catering to that very goal; what was important here was numbers, and Akabane certainly had them.

But this time he may have gone too far. A tiny brawl, a minor scuffle at best, but it was with a member of the Five Virtuosos (Gakushuu winces, remembering the mocking laugh his dad had given him at the mere mention of the title). Koyama Natushiko, to be exact. Gakushuu resists the desire to groan; Natsuhiko _had_ always had a knack for pissing people off… and unfortunately for him, he was also fragile as fucking glass. Several days in the hospital, two broken ribs, and a shattered right forearm later, and the staff was finally calling for action against Akabane’s explosive temperament.

“What is the general consensus among staff and students?” Gakushuu asks carefully, his voice measured.

The principal responds with an exasperated sigh. “Well, the staff are kind enough to call him something of a ‘genius with a mean-streak.’ The students, on the other hand, have taken to referring to him as the ‘Demon of 2-A,” if that explains the outlook a little bit better.” Gakuho leans forward, obscuring Akabane’s smirking face in one image. “I know very well about the little rivalry you two have. I like it. He keeps you in check, making sure you don’t sit too comfortable and unassuming at the top. And you’re just competition enough to push him to his full academic potential. Both of your scores have been comparably higher since we’ve started pitting the two of you against each other. But I’m not sure there’s a way to resolve this that doesn’t _at least_ involve demoting him several classes.”

Gakushuu steadily meets his father’s gaze. “C-Class?” He questions, trying to keep the worry out of his voice.

His father stares at him for several moments, silent, before sitting back in his chair once more. “E-Class.”

Gakushuu closes his eyes, feeling an odd sense of guilt wash over him.

_"Why did you help me back there?” he calls out before he can stop himself. He steps back from the window he’s cleaning, wet-wipe still poised awkwardly in his hand. Orange rays of light flash through the windows, blending in with Gakushuu’s hair._

_Akabane Karma stands up from where he was leaning over to collect a dust-pan before turning his back slightly to look at him. For a second, Gakushuu worries that the other is going to try and challenge him in some way, or worse, blackmail him. It certainly was a poor showing out there for the Principal’s Son, the kind of showing that could cause trouble if leaked…_

_“No particular reason,” Akabane answers him, voice nonchalant. “I guess I pitied you.” He turns back around. Gakushuu waits for more, a grim "buuuuut~" or something similar, and the room is filled with what feels like a tense silence until he realizes that it isn’t coming._

_“You’ll have to let me repay the debt sometime--” he starts before the other cuts him off unceremoniously._

_“Oh, so you’re indebted to me now?” Akabane snickers, not bothering to face him this time. “As much as I’d love to see Mr. Perfect grovel before me, I don’t think I’ve_ really _earned it yet.” He continues sweeping, deaf to Gakushuu’s protests in the background. “Really, I was just helping out a pathetic-looking guy in a pathetic situation. You know me, can't leave losers fumbling like that and all._ Normally _I’d really_ have to  _hold it over you. But like I said, I really pitied you back there.”_

_Akabane moves on to sweep another section of the room as Gakushuu stands in something of a confused silence. He hadn’t known his classmate to possess that sort of kindness in him, as rude as that was to think._

_“How’s this,” and Gakushuu perks up slightly at the words, “Put in a good word for me with your old man next time I fuck up and hurt some poor sucker in the hallway, yeah? We’ll call it even.””_

“E-Class is far too extreme a punishment for someone of Akabane-san’s caliber,” Gakushuu argues. He’s strangely confident. He knows his worth, and he knows Akabane’s worth. And while the jury was still out on the former, he knows that his father certainly agreed on the latter. Gakushuu could salvage the situation, surely. “I assure you, one month on C-Class probation before moving him up to 2-B should be more than enough. He’ll win back his position in the A-Class by quarterly exams, keeping him locked up with the majority should bore him to absolute tears within a day. He won’t stand to risk acting out like that again after learning his lesson.”

“Hmm…” His father thinks, and Gakushuu silently applauds himself. For one insane moment, he really thinks he’s swayed the man’s opinion. “How can you be so sure about that, boy?”

“You said it yourself, sir. We’re rivals, with that level of competition comes a level of understanding,” Gakushuu’s practically glowing, hoping that his father won’t notice. “Besides, shoving a brain like that all the way back in E-Class likely won’t motivate him to behave any _better_. If anything, he might just settle for staying the way he is and learn nothing.”

Gakushuu sets his mouth in a hard line. To be completely honest, he absolutely _despises_ the lies he’s touting. Fundamentally, he disagrees with his father’s methods. It was like classifying dogs by blood-purity, the pure-breds go in A-Class, and the mutts in E. Not to mention that it automatically labeled underperforming students as hopeless miscreants. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t right, and he knew it. But right now there was nothing Gakushuu could do but go along with it. Fighting for Akabane, one of the only students that _really_ broke that stereotype, that was the best he could do.

Not to mention he sort-of owed the guy.

“You make an excellent point, son,” the principal says (and Gakushuu is disgusted by how much his heart soars to be called that), “but I’m not sure a few months probation is really going to help this one at this point.”

His father stands to his full height, an impressive 183 cm, and the younger man’s chest grows tight with fear.

“There are people calling for expulsion at this point, Asano. Trust me, I’ve entertained every possible method to weasel out of this one. After all, I would hate for such a brilliant pupil like him to go to waste over in the ‘End Class.’ But I’m afraid Akabane really has reached the _end_ of his leash this time.” The man stops to chuckle at his own joke and Gakushuu is suddenly filled with an inexplicable fury.

“There’s only so much the PTA is going to take, genius be-damned. Koyama’s family is threatening a lawsuit against both the Akabane family and the school for not delivering a just punishment sooner.” Gakuho starts to gather the papers strewn about his desk, and right there Gakushuu knows he’s lost. “Not to mention A-Class moves exponentially faster than both the B and C classes. If we drop him, even temporarily, I’m not sure he’d be able to recover all that time wasted. I doubt that even _you_ could handle it. And _you are my son_ , after all.”

He levels his gaze at the boy he’s just addressed, momentarily surprised by how young he really looks all of a sudden. A mind and presence like his at 16 years, well, it's safe to say that Gakuho wasn’t particularly used to thinking of his son as something _pitiable._ But the way the boy, the way his  _son_ flinches under his burning gaze, the embarrassment and shame so very present in his downcast eyes. He’s slight, slender in a way that only comes with youth. He is so unbelievably small.

Gakuho flicks his gaze back up, split-second of contemplation decidedly over. “Naivete like yours would kill a career if you were my age.”

And he leaves.


	2. Shiota

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i received a comment today asking if i was planning to update this-- i absolutely am. i had no idea it had been so long since i posted the first chapter. i'd planned to sit on this draft until it reached 6000 words (at this moment it's only about 4000) but i figure it's been long enough.
> 
> the second half of this chapter was fun to write, i'd say. i really enjoy dialogue writing. i'm planning to pursue gakushuu becoming friends with and making amends to class e further in the story. it will probably take a few more chapters than anticipated to reach a conclusion i'd be satisfied with, though, so in the meantime please continue supporting me.

Principal Gakuho slides his belt through the loops of his pants, whistling a made-up tune to himself. He pants slightly with exertion, sweat beading at his hairline, but he opts not to wipe it away lest he be judged for weakness. Living his life as he did, it was best for those around him not to suspect him to have any sort of defining human characteristics. Gods and great lords always had something ethereal and alien about them, otherworldly, almost. Or at least, that’s what Gakushuu thought was his father’s goal. In reality, the boy could do nothing to fathom the inner mechanisms of his father’s brain, along with the rest of the pitiful, foolish mortals that populated the earth.

Gakushuu stares at a point on the floor, shaky eyes tracing the rings of carved wood. He wondered what went through his father’s head, wondered about his motives, his view of others. He saw himself from a third person view; a ginger boy, kneeling on the floor, head bowed downwards. Ginger, how incredibly strange.  _We Asano’s need to stick out, we are special after all!_ Gakushuu chuckles to himself, imagining his father chastising him, distracting himself from the flick of the wrist, the rush of wind against his ear, the--

SNAP! of the leather belt cracking against the delicate skin of his shoulder, against the trapezius muscle curling up into his neck.

He breathes heavily, just barely suppressing a yelp (of pain? Of surprise?). The initial contact hurt, surely, but the burning pain like someone was pouring acid down his back, the rising heat that told him his skin was swelling, surely, like the claw marks of a furious harpy raking its talons down his back, or a tiger, a phoenix of legend, what else could explain the heat, rising up his throat and settling in his eyes?

Don’t cry, he pleads with himself, don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry--

SNAP! and this time he can’t stop himself. A small sob escapes him and he folds, collapsing onto the floor. Gakushuu presses his forehead against the wooden tile he was just so enamored with, desperately trying to cool himself down. His clothing lay in disarray, shirt pulled and stretched to reveal angry red welts drawing down along his spine to dip eventually below the belt. A large tear in the collar of Gakushuu’s white cotton pajama shirt allowed for one side to slide over the slope of his shoulder, revealing more slowly bruising, deep red wounds along his upper back. Gakushuu desperately clutches at the rip, struggling for breath, trying to hold his shirt-- himself, his pride, his life-- together.

The agony of the red, raised flesh on his back seems to steal the very air from his lungs as he kneels on the ground. He shakes nearly violently from the effort of keeping his gasps inaudible. Disgusting ego or not, he couldn’t seem to stop the tears flowing freely from his eyes. Was it anger? Pain? Despair?

Whatever. He takes in a choking, silent sob and stares at a fixed point on the floor, choosing to focus on the flat hardwood pressing into his bare knees instead of the sting of knives carving deep grooves into his body.

The floor distorts in his vision and for some insane moment he thinks-- this is fake. This is fake, this isn’t real. He stares a hole into his fist, balled up and white-knuckled. Those are not his hands. This is not his bedroom floor. This wood is fake, this body is fake, the pain is fake, this life, his bleeding, disgusting, unbearable life-- it’s fake, all fake, all of it.

He takes another deep, shuddering breath. Gakushuu adamantly refuses to scream, instead chewing at his lips and mouth to swallow down the bile and sick vomit threatening to burst from his throat. He felt disgusting; he could feel the sweat pouring down his face from exertion, the tears and snot dripping down his chin.

Several droplets land silently on the floor; he curses those tears, that weakness. He probably looks awful, far from the well-groomed, handsome young man of the public eye. Gakushuu presses his mouth into a thin white line, chewing the inside of his cheek with such aggressiveness that he can taste copper. He refuses to utter a single noise, whimper, cry, as much as he desperately wanted to he couldn’t bring himself to let it happen. If there was one thing that Asano Gakushuu had at this point, it was his pride.

The stark, white, pale tone that Gakushuu’s taken on is not lost on his father; he takes in the sickly color of his skin, the sweat forming small droplets on the back of his neck despite the vicious markings there. How his son’s form trembles, shaking with much more severity than the boy would ever admit. At this point, neither of them could definitely recall the origin of their altercation (if it could even be called that); just some other inane, rinse-and-repeat problem they always had now that Gakushuu had started-- somehow-- _losing_ to Class E. He rolls his shoulders, cracking his neck and watching as his son flinched on the floor below him.

“You know I hate to do this, Asano,” and somehow the name hurts more than the whipping Gakushuu’s just endured, “but it is imperative that you understand how important it is that you start winning again. I thought you were the best of the best--”

“I.. _am_ .” Gakuho casts his eyes downward; his son forces the words out between heaving breaths, practically growling in order to push them out through gritted teeth. He raises his eyebrows, it’s not like his boy to defy him, much less _cut him off_ , in the midst of a lecture.

“Are you now?”

Gakushuu picks himself up, slowing folding himself into a sitting position despite how his body protests and how the movement pulls at his sensitive, still burning skin. “Yes,” he says. Regardless of the nettle he suddenly possessed, he’s still unable to bring himself to meet his father’s cold gaze. “I will not fail you again.”

Gakuho turns heel and exits the room. “Do take a cold shower when you are finished,” are his only words as he closes the door.

* * *

 

Gakushuu sighs, tossing his overlong orange bangs out of his face and adjusting his glasses to keep them out of view, before pulling the hood further down to obscure his face. He’d hoped the glasses and the trick of location (not many of his classmates lived out near this particular supermarket, after all) would ensure that no one he was familiar with would recognize him, but he still couldn’t help but worry. He’d run out of concealer in his skin tone, and he'd really need a new container of it to make an appearance at school on Monday if the vicious, purpling mark stretching from his cheekbone to the corner of his mouth was anything to go by.

He tested some cheap, no-name brand of liquid concealer on his hand and scowled. “Too dark,” he murmured to no one in particular. He breathed out a sigh of exasperation. He was _way_ too tense for just buying some makeup, regardless of his social standing at school and the clear signs of home abuse quite literally tattooed across his face he was still just a high schooler from the town over during winter break; the chances of anyone coming even close to recognizing him was slim to none--

“Asano… kun?”

As good an excuse for the ugly, blackened bruise on his face as it would’ve been, he just barely stops himself from smashing his head into the makeup display in order to just end his misery right there. Just his luck, right? As soon as he tried even a little bit to unwind in any way, he gets caught, he gets outed, just like always-- a metaphor for his life, this is-- now he’s going to get trashed by the whole school for wearing makeup-- was that even something that people got made fun of anymore? Fuck it, whatever, who knows-- _and_ his father was going to beat the shit out of him, or bury him alive, or _something_ for being so careless--

Gakushuu cracks a peek at the classmate that’s apparently recognized him, an excuse about the bruise and the makeup paused on the tip of his tongue (The ice is horrible these days, isn’t it? I slipped and fell on my way out the house, not that it matters, a little makeup goes a long way towards looking as perfect as I do, don’t you think? Or something equally as gaudy and unnecessary) when his words die off in his mouth. He’s come face to face with…

Someone he’s… Never seen before in his life.

“Nagisa? Is this someone you know?” Gakushuu scours the far reaches of his mind for the name, trying desperately to pin it to the face staring at him in shock, and just a tinge of straight-up horror. The girl is beautiful in a sort of… artificial way, as strange as that sounds, with long, light-blue hair falling down her back in careful layers. She has these pretty, doll-like features; a small nose and mouth and huge blue eyes, all done up in layers of makeup that wouldn’t have looked out of place on a Sephora advertisement (though maybe it wasn’t as intense? Gakushuu had no idea about the finer points of makeup, regardless of whether or not he had almost brained himself on a shelf of concealers). But something about her expression-- her eyes, maybe-- really puts her into the role of a “doll.” Her far-off, subdued expression, like there wasn’t actually anything there. She was there in physicality, maybe, but well…

He knew the feeling well, but at the same time, something burned behind those clear blue eyes that he didn’t understand. Depression, despair, loneliness, isolation, and… rage. An animosity that almost scared him. Plotting, cunning, silent fury.

Gakushuu couldn’t comprehend it.

Apparently, they’ve stared at each other too long, as the older woman standing next to her repeats her question, this time with a bit more force behind it. The girl fumbles for an answer in a way that seems almost hauntingly familiar. “Uh, well, sort of-- um--”

Gakushuu shifts his gaze from the familiar(ish) face to look instead at her mother. She stood fairly tall, dressed in a modest light-blue top and an off-white cardigan. She looked young, stylish enough, with a dark blue bob cut with oddly swooping bangs. “Nagisa” was probably her eldest and only child, then, and if her haircut was any indication, she was struggling vaguely with the idea of embracing motherhood in some way. After all, it was haircut usually seen on much older women, so she was probably trying too hard to slot herself into the role, something like that-- though, Gakushuu thinks, he’s not exactly in the position to be judging anyone else based on the state of their hair.

He searches the mother’s face now. Her expression was almost completely unreadable, a perfect mask of nothingness that wouldn’t have been out of place on a woman winning the lottery or mourning the death of her late husband. Then suddenly it clicks.

“Shiota--” he looks to her daughter again, “San…” But, the Shiota family only had a…

“ _Wow_ uh… you look terrible Kurashiki-kun, are you okay?” Nagisa cuts in, a tad too forcefully to seem natural. Shiota-san doesn’t seem to notice, though to be fair Gakushuu would have no idea given the lack of _anything_ on her face, and Nagisa continues. They look at him pleadingly, and judging by the fake name they’ve adopted for him, they _really_ wanted him to play along.

“Yeah,” he continues the dialogue as naturally as possible, “I had a bit of an accident with some ice and the guardrail outside my house. You know how it is this time of year--”

“Oh, _yeah_ , of course.” Nagisa refuses to look him in the eye, instead staring at the spot next to his head on the wall. “Hey, can you fill me in on what I missed at the last all-school assembly, you know, since you were there for _the whole thing-_ -”

Nagisa’s mom lights up suddenly. “Oh-- Kurahashi-san--” (Kurashiki, Gakushuu bitterly thinks, but it doesn’t really matter regardless) “What class are you in? I didn’t know my Nagisa-chan had any classmates outside of E.” The older woman suddenly grows darker; her overall facial expression doesn’t change outside of a slight smirk, but something about her suddenly seems a hair off. Forced, threatening even--

Gakushuu realizes with a shaky gulp that she reminds him of his father, his epiphany moment doing nothing to curb the shivers running down his spine or the nausea pooling in a pit in his stomach.

“You know how it is… once you get ostracized out in the boonies, people don’t want to associate with you anymore, hm?” Shiota’s hand-- the one not occupied with a grocery basket-- comes to rest on her child’s shoulder. He recognizes the gesture: a silent, non-compromising threat. One that people normally wouldn’t pick up on. “Of course, you wouldn’t know, would you, Kurahashi-san. After all, you’re in--”

“B-B Class,” Gakushuu supplies.

“-- B Class!” And Shiota claps her hands together with almost out-of-character glee. “Aren’t you smart!” She turns to Nagisa. “I had no idea Nagisa-chan had such intelligent friends! Well, I won’t intrude on your reunion anymore-- go on! Go! Socialize!”

Nagisa’s mom ushers them into the food court area and practically shoves them both into a sticky, uncomfortable booth together. “Mommy’s got some shopping left! I’ll be back in a bit, discuss! Don’t let me get in the way!” Her hand comes to rest on Nagisa’s shoulder again, and Gakushuu understands the underlying message. _Do not leave this booth, do not leave this boy, do not leave this opportunity,_ and finally, _Here is your chance._

_Do not ruin it._

* * *

 

They’ve been sitting in a horrified silence for the past fifteen-odd minutes, not even counting the time Gakushuu awkwardly asked Nagisa for their order and stood in the food-line silently contemplating booking it out of the whole establishment and possibly into oncoming traffic. At some point the hood had come down from around his face; he’d already been recognized, he figures. By now, the inevitable end to the night goes something along the lines of: Gakushuu goes home, his father finds out about his little excursion meet-and-greet (because he knows everything, always), and promptly disposes of him in a way that would never lead the police to suspect foul play. At the very least, it would discourage him from engaging in active vivisection of his own son, which was a definite plus. Gakushuu shrugs, disregarding the cashier’s concerned stare to pick up their order. Well, it can only go up from here.

Finally, he gathers the willpower to open his mouth, over two practically untouched milkshakes and a thing of fries growing steadily colder on the table. “So…” he cringes as Nagisa’s gaze shoots to him like a deer in headlights, and he takes a breath to steady himself. He was sort of hating his all-powerful-perfect-school-leader reputation right about now. Really not the best for making friendly conversation. “Uh… what should I. Call you.”

Nagisa blinks at him owlishly. “Excuse me?” Evidently, that was not the question they had been anticipating.

“Like uh… pronouns?” Gakushuu offers. “What do you want to be called.” He once again considers hauling his sorry ass out of the McDonalds when Nagisa does nothing but continue to stare. “I apologize if I’m being insensitive I’m uh… I’m afraid I don’t quite know much about… how to approach this--”

And suddenly, Nagisa snaps to attention. “I’m a boy! I’m a boy, uh, he and him pronouns, my name is Nagisa Shiota and I prefer… that.” He seems to deflate from across the booth. Gakushuu takes a hesitant sip of his milkshake. “I am. Male-aligned. Please do not use female pronouns for me. Please don’t treat me any differently because of this.”

Gakushuu chews on his bottom lip, nodding and blinking in a way that probably conveyed his confusion. If Nagisa slid any further down into the seat he was going to melt into the floor, probably like they both desperately wanted to do in that moment. “This wasn’t… a _voluntary_ thing. _I_ did not do this. My mother, she really, _really_ wanted a daughter.” He puts an elbow on the table and groans into his hand. “She wanted a girl-- _wants_ a girl. She’s. I don’t know,” he makes a gesture like he’s throwing his hands in the air in exasperation, “She’s not all there I guess. She wants a girl, so she…” he takes a breath through clenched teeth, “got a girl.”

He stares at Gakushuu. In that moment, everything unsaid, everything left out of his explanation comes rushing out simply through the intensity of his gaze. _My mother does this to me, she’s horrible to me, I’m scared of her, I hate her, there’s nothing I can do, I can’t defy her, she has me chained up, I’m going to die like this, there’s nothing I can do, nothing I can do, I’m trapped, there’s nothing, nothing--_

“I'd say we're in something of the same boat, then” Gakushuu says. Nagisa quirks an eyebrow and Gakushuu almost laughs uncharacteristically. Something in Nagisa’s eyes glimmer, like… amusement. He could almost hear the smaller boy teasing him, _oh, the almighty, giggling like a normal person? I didn’t really know you had emotions, besides pettiness and arrogance that is._ Something like that.

Gakushuu takes another sip, vivisection dancing vividly into his mind. Might as well lay it all out there on the table. “I’m sure you know the rumors by now. Or at the very least, Akabane’s told everyone, you are friends from what I understand--”

“Karma hasn’t said anything,” Nagisa says, shaking his head. “Karma’s a good guy, regardless of what everyone says. I didn’t even know he _knew_ you.” He ducks his head.

Gakushuu can’t help but smile a bit at Nagisa’s confirmation. Yeah, Akabane’s good, in a way. He’d always thought so. “So you’ve heard the rumors? The bruises? CPS? The way father looks at me like he’s er, ‘appraising cattle?’” he makes air quotes with his fingers. Nagisa nods. “Hm.”

“So I take it they’re true?”

“I can't _imagine_ what gave it away,” Gakushuu responds, almost sardonically. He blames his sudden personality shift on the diffusing tension of the situation; low-stress situations are a foreign thing in his life, it’s not _his fault_ that once he gets the opportunity to relax he might go a bit… “Was it the giant fist-shaped bruise on my face?” … overboard.

The side of Nagisa’s face quirks up in a tiny smile and he sips at his drink. “It’s not _that_ bad-- just… you know, pretty bad,” he corrects himself, nodding, at Gakushuu’s pointed look. “So, what’re you going to tell everyone this time?”

“What, my ice-guardrail incident not convincing you?” Gakushuu sits forward to lean his chin on his hands. “I thought I was doing a pretty good job! I’m a talented speaker when I feel the need, I’ll have you know.”

Nagisa gives him an unimpressed look. “As much as I believe in your speech-delivering abilities, something tells me that after er, _several_ fist-shaped bruises in the span of a few years when you’re basically praised as god of the judo club and soccer team for your coordination uhh,” he trails off, cutting his gaze to the side. “Well, let’s just say your stories-- it’s not cutting it.”

Gakushuu sits back again, pursing his lips. “To be fair, they weren’t _all_ fist-shaped-- the first one was desk shaped, believe it or not,” he chooses to ignore Nagisa’s murmured _Oh yeah, I believe it_ , “But I see your point. Hence the makeup,” he makes a sweeping gesture towards the store as a whole.

“Oh yes, your uh, _lucrative_ venture into generic brand concealer that will probably take you three bottles just to cover up a pimple.”

“I’ll inform you that my skin in _naturally_ flawless.”

“Well, let’s see how you feel about that after you’re done with whatever formula Walmart’s been concocting--”

The conversation continues at a leisurely pace, going neither here nor there. The bulk of their time is spent discussing school (dreadful on Gakushuu’s end but honestly peachy-keen on Nagisa’s-- something about a really inspiring new teacher? Explains the sudden rise in the ranks on E’s part), mutual friends (of which Akabane was really the only one, if Gakushuu could even categorize him as a ‘friend’-- he tended to see him more as a _casual acquaintance_ maybe. Or a nuisance that he respected), sports (Nagisa’d taken up hiking so he claimed-- his seeming lack of presence was apparently due to developing the ability to sneak up on animals for better viewing?), but in the end, the two hardly stray from the topic at hand.

“Aren’t there better brands out there for covering up uh… unsightly skin… things?” Nagisa asks, carefully hedging after a slight, heavy silence passes. After a beat (and a quizzical look from his orange-haired classmate), he continues. “I don’t think there’s any way to say this without overstepping--”

“Don’t worry about it,” Gakushuu says, waving his hand in the air, and he means it, “I feel like we’ve been overstepping all night.” _We, as in, me too,_ he deigns not to tack onto the end of the sentence, trying to preserve at least a bit of his haughty, holier-than-thou reputation in the face of what he was supposed to regard as a sworn enemy (he tries to convince himself that he has an image to uphold, rather than it being his fragile, broken pride getting in the way of admitting his own lack of boundary-respect).

Nagisa stares down at his own thumb, brushing a droplet of condensation off the side of his now-empty milkshake. “Well, let’s just put it at the fact that you haven’t worn a t-shirt in eight months.”

Gakushuu winces. “Bit hard,” he admits. He doesn’t know what possesses him to do it, but he unzips his hoodie just a bit past the collar of his white button-up, and undoes the top button. The yellowing, unmistakable shape of a belt buckle splayed across his collarbone catches Nagisa’s eye, and the boy averts his gaze slightly to rest on the second button instead. He suddenly feels like he’s viewing something that no one was ever supposed to see, an aspect of the Asano household-- no, of _Gakushuu Asano’s life_ \-- that no one should have ever known for certain truly existed.

Watching the crown, the mythic, all-encompassing God known as Asano Gakuhsuu, crumble before him felt almost scandalous. He tries not to think about what lay beneath that neatly done-up shirt, likely a myriad of similar bruises and markings, and suddenly for the first time that night, the gravity and truth of the rumors floating around Asano-kun settled down on Nagisa’s shoulders.

Out of nowhere, Nagisa felt ill. He reminisced on his own childhood-- that time in middle school where he’d put his hair up in a ponytail and chopped it off (and his mother hadn’t cooked for him for weeks), or even earlier, in primary school, where he’d started stashing various shorts around the elementary school to change into (and the way his mother practically tore his hair out when she found out he wasn’t wearing the dresses she’d bought for him properly). Eventually, he’d stopped acting out, stoped resisting. The more compliant he grew, the more freedoms he was given, the less… outbursts his mother suffered. If he just withdrew and let that woman pull the strings, he could wear pants to school, put his hair up so that its length was less noticeable, refuse the makeup-- most of the time at least-- without repercussion.

His eyes stay rooted to that second button. But isn’t Gakushuu already at the mercy of his father? Isn’t he already the perfect puppet that the principal’s been cultivating for years? The student council president is an alabaster statue-- perfect grades, perfect athleticism, capable, charming, handsome-- truly the perfect man. And it was _his_ father that had carved such a goliath out of crude marble, chiseling away at it from the moment it came into existence. Gakushuu Asano is flawless, directing human evolution to a higher state of being. He is a genetic mutant in that sense. A perfect, genetic general.

So why is he still not good enough?

The other stands up so suddenly that he bumps into the table ungracefully, and the bang as it resituates itself on the tile floor shocks Nagisa out of his reverie.

“I’m sorry to cut our time together short, but I think it’s about time that I returned home--” Asano hurriedly redoes the buttons all the way up to the neck, zipping his hoodie back up once again with definitive, albeit shaken motions. He’s stared too long, Nagisa realizes. He stared too long and too silently, and now Asano-kun is uncomfortable.

Swift as a viper, Nagisa’s hand shoots out to grab his peer by the wrist as he slides by. He doesn’t want him to go like this, back to that house with that _man,_ so unnerved. Especially when it was Nagisa’s fault he was in such a sorry state anyways. Asano might think of himself as some unshakable master manipulator of human emotion or what have you, but truth be told, he’s practically transparent when it comes to matters regarding the principal. He refuses to meet Nagisa’s gaze. “I really should get going,” he says, staring at the exit. “It’s getting to be around dinner time. Father values punctuality.”

“I’m sure he does,” Nagisa responds, rooting around in the small bag that he carried, the least purse-like purse his mom owned. One he’d only picked since she’d thrown a fit last time he tried to leave the house without one (a girl your age needs a purse! It’ll offset your outfit so nicely, and everyone will understand how stylish and sophisticated you are!). He digs out a tube of concealer and sets it on the table. “For your arms. It’s waterproof, and heavy duty enough to conceal pretty much anything,” he offers at Asano’s stunned silence. “Made for covering tattoos. Mom doesn’t like me to have pores from what I’ve gathered.”

A snort, and Nagisa can’t help the small grin that breaks out on his face. “Well, she’s doing an excellent job.” And he’s gone.

Nagisa idles on his phone until his mother gathers him almost an hour later, shooting off noncommittal answers to her frankly excessive questions (how was your chat? What did you eat? What did you talk about? Anything else? What are his grades like? How does he study? Are you good friends? Did you get his phone number? You should ask him to tutor you!). It isn’t until later when he’s sitting awkwardly in the passenger seat of his mother’s off-white van, listening to her prattle on about something or another that had happened to her in the shopping mall-- something about oranges? Or maybe chocolate samples? He wasn’t exactly rapt with attention-- that Nagisa realizes he’d never paid Asano-kun back for their meal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i do not support transgender nagisa headcanons, i apologize for that but a huge part of his struggle in the story is overcoming his mother's abusive tendencies and her coercing him to dress as her "daughter" against his will, and it is a huge contributor to her being both physically and mentally abusive towards him for the majority of the series. i say this as a transgender person myself.


End file.
